Fun With Singaporean National Archives from Kerry Howley:
I think the message here is that if you keep having children with empty, improbably round eye sockets, you should probably consider tubal ligation. On a more uplifting note, we really need more billboards reminding us that we’re just a few days removed from total annihilation.
Every time I hear someone refer to Singapore as quasi-Fascist, I kind of cringe and think "Do we really need to drop the F bomb here?" Then I see things like this, and I begin to think yes, yes we do . . .
I have to disagree here.
Is this really any worse than, say, Planned Parenthood's bus advertisements for abortions (which don't actually mention abortions)? I share the instinctive revulsion, but we're not talking about forced sterilizations or mandatory child-limitation policy like in China.
Yes, it's more than a little creepy to have the government shout, "stop having kids you can't support" at you, but I believe you yourself have written about how high illegitimacy rates and teenage motherhood among the American poor is not for lack of access to contraceptives, and of how this tends to create a death-cycle of poverty. This seems like a natural policy result of Levitt's theory on abortions & crime, thirty years before Levitt ever published.
National defense is fascist, eh?
One look at the map confirms that Singapore could, in fact, be conquered in a few days. For that matter, how long did it take for the Japanese to take Singapore in WWII?
Gotta love libertarianism.
And "Speak More Mandarin and Less Dialects" is the same thing every country has always done, as an existential project. I just read "The Discovery of France" and it talks about the hundreds of years of work to make France speak French.
And if these posters reveal fascism, it's fascism with a smiley face.
Is this really any worse than exhortations in the US about not falling for the "stop snitchin'" meme? Or reminders to eat 5 servings of vegetables and fruits every day?
Libertarians seem to think it's absolutely fantastic and part of the Free Market when tobacco companies put up cigarette ads--but it's fascist if the government puts up something exhorting people to not indulge in stupid behavior?
Libertarians never fail to amuse me.
"I think the message here is that if you keep having children with empty, improbably round eye sockets, you should probably consider tubal ligation."
That was much creepier before I followed the link. I was wondering what the hell was causing so many kids to be born with this terrible deformity.
It wouldn't be so bad without the sterilization plea.
The one about Mandarin is wierd. Fascism generally includes ultranationalism. Mandarin is foreign.
They're a lot more quasi than fascist.
" Fascism generally includes ultranationalism. Mandarin is foreign."
It's hard to say what's 'local' for Singapore. The heads of government are mostly Chinese, as is much of the population, although there are also plenty of Indians and Bumiputras (or native Malays, or whatever).
But these ads don't get to the heart of what I found objectionable about Singapore's birth control campaigns - that they try to limit procreation by low income, poorly educated people but have also had major campaigns to try to get well educated women to have many more children. There's a certain logic to it, but they're just so blatant about deciding which offspring are desirable and which aren't.
Even so, these campaigns are far from the forced sterilizations, forced abortions of 8-1/2 month old 'fetuses', and strict eugenics policy of mainland China. Singapore is a nanny state, but it's still a long way from China.
Njorl - also, I believe Lee Kuan Yew is himself a native Hokkien speaker; this is hardly suppression of a minority culture. None of these examples are particularly authoritarian, much less fascist.
Haven't we been hearing about the pending destruction of our lifestyle, values, freedoms, etc for the last 6 1/2 yeas? Doesn't our own military advertise, and heavily at that?
There's a certain logic to it, but they're just so blatant about deciding which offspring are desirable and which aren't.
Is that really so bad, though? Is it really any different than, say, the Clinton-era combination of welfare reform and tuition tax credits? The former raised the marginal cost of child-rearing faced by poor parents, while the latter lowered the marginal cost of child-rearing faced by middle-class parents. The intended result is essentially the same.
I must admit, my gut feels the same instinctive revulsion as you, but my brain is telling me to ignore it.
what I found objectionable about Singapore's birth control campaigns ... There's a certain logic to it, but they're just so blatant
Fascists must be really evil if they go around thinking clearly and being honest and upfront about their conclusions.
Fortunately, it could never happen here.
what I found objectionable about Singapore's birth control campaigns ... There's a certain logic to it, but they're just so blatant
Fascists must be really evil if they go around thinking clearly and being honest and upfront about their conclusions.
Fortunately, it could never happen here.
There's a certain logic to it, but they're just so blatant about deciding which offspring are desirable and which aren't.
Or, it could be which offspring will consume fewer state resources. Raising children properly requires money. If you don't have money, and you have children, some people will want the state to do something. Easy solution? Discourage the poor from having more kids than they can afford. Genetics has nothing to do with it.
As far as the language is concerned, this is nothing compared to what goes on in Quebec. Laws protecting French are 10Xs worse. If you are an English-speaking family and move to Quebec, you cannot send your children to a school where they would be taught in English, even though Canada is officially bi-lingual. There are laws that regulate the size of English language lettering on commercial signs in relation to to French language lettering. If I remember correctly, people have also been imprisoned over the sign issue.
I agree that what Singapore does isn't horrible, just intrusive. The term 'nanny state' fits better than quasi-fascist.
As far as the degree of meddling in Singapore, this is just a small sample. When you visit, you see signs in the airport toilet stalls informing you that it is illegal to fail to flush the toilet after using it in the Singapore airport. It's illegal to have and use chewing gum, because if people chewed gum, they might dispose of it poorly (I heard something about gumming up subway doors, thus preventing them from opening quickly enough; they might have recently begun allowing gum again, and tourists are allowed to bring in small amounts for personal consumption). People are encouraged to speak English at work and their 'native tongue' at home, because the government wants everyone to remain bilingual.
One of my favorites is that, to stop urination in the elevators of public housing (which is most of it, one way or another), they have urine sensors in all of the elevators. If one is set off, the elevator stops and no one can leave until the authorities come to get the offendor, who gets his picture posted publicly. I've heard that mothers with children in diapers are afraid to use the elevators.
At the more extreme end, there's the caning of teenagers for graffiti, and the death penalty for those transporting illegal drugs. There's the use of economic penalties against neighborhoods that vote against the 'ruling party', the use of large lawsuit awards to stomp down political opposition, etc. There are many aspects that one might object to, although it still all pales in comparison with mainland China.
There are many, many more examples. My point is that Singapore's government meddles in the lives of its citizens far more than most capitalist democracies, and clearly deserves its nanny state label. Yet it's still preferable to many of the countries in the region in terms of respecting basic rights, and the prosperity that the government and system has delivered is obvious if one travels from there to, say, Manila or Kuala Lumpur. Singapore is an unusual country in many ways.
Hey, if most nanny states did half the job that Singapore does, I wouldn't be a libertarian. Does anyone doubt that Lee Kuan Yew's party wouldn't win 99-1 in a completely free and fair election? I mean, you could eat a sandwich off the floor of a bus, the education system, health system, transit system, parks, etc. are all top notch, the business environment might be the best in the world....I don't doubt that Singapore's government is the world's most competent.
Does anyone doubt that Lee Kuan Yew's party wouldn't win 99-1 in a completely free and fair election?
Given that they only win about 60-26-a few small minority parties in a non-free and fair election, yes, I doubt they would win 99-1 in a free and fair election. Also, Lee Kuan Yew is retired; his son is PM now.
you could eat a sandwich off the floor of a bus
And, indeed, more and more of Singapore's unluckier pensioners are being incentivized to do so. The city's social safety net is set extremely low on the assumption that old people all have well-behaved Confucian descendants to take care of them in their old age.
"At the more extreme end, there's the caning of teenagers for graffiti, and the death penalty for those transporting illegal drugs. There's the use of economic penalties against neighborhoods that vote against the 'ruling party', the use of large lawsuit awards to stomp down political opposition, etc. There are many aspects that one might object to, although it still all pales in comparison with mainland China."
Also add in torturing political allies who disagree with you on a few issues to get them to sign statements saying they're communists. C'mon, can you really not find something about these posters kind of creepy?